In a conventional thermal exchange device, a heat sink, which has a plurality of fins and is attached to the top and bottom plates of a thermo-electric cooling unit, has been widely used. In order to obtain a sufficient capability for discharging heat from inside of the communication system, the height and pitch of the fins at the heat sink rust increase in size. This results in the lager size of the overall communication system.
In general, electronic devices or communication devices radiate heat by using a radiation equipment. If they do not radiate the heat, then the devices will become out of order due to the breakdown or shortage caused by the heat.
An open-air communication system (e.g., a base station, a subscriber network and a traffic controller) adopts the method of radiating internal heat to the outside by using a specific radiation device or cooling a mainframe located inside by inspiriting air from outside.
Moreover, a conventional optical repeater could use a heat sink for radiation since its communication is performed through lower frequencies because of low data amount. However, since the frequency bands are enlarged into the super high frequencies due to the augmentation of the traffic and the communication devices become highly integrated, leaner and lighter, the conventional heat sink could no longer effectively perform the radiation. Therefore, the forced cooling methods of attaching fan to a body are suggested to solve the above problem.
Now, referring to FIG. 1, the conventional open-air housing is described.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an exemplary open-air housing.
An open-air base station comprises: an inside system which provides the actual services; an external housing (70) for insulating and protecting the inside system from the outside; a heat exchanger (72) located about the upper side of the housing (70) to maintain internal temperature of the system within a predetermined range; a vent (74) located about the upper side (72) of the heat exchanger for changing air.
In addition, a door is formed on a lateral side of the housing. The door includes a handle for facilitating the maintenance of the system and can be used to open and close the door. The D-Gasket (80) for waterproof and rainproof is formed between the heat exchanger (72) and the housing (70). The Plinth (82) for laying a cable (not shown) of the system is formed about the lower side of the housing (70).
The above system operates as follows.
First, the temperature sensor (not shown) in the housing (70) senses the temperature. If the sensed temperature is over the predetermined temperature, then the temperature of the inside system can be maintained constantly by operating an internal air discharging fan and/or an external air inspiration fan (not shown) and exchanging the heat with heat plates (not shown) of the heat exchanger (72).
FIG. 2 describes the structure of the thermo-electric cooling heat exchanger.
It consists of the thermo-electric cooling elements (10; TEC) which includes: a hot-side insulator; a cool-side insulator and semiconductor grids plated with a conductive material onto both sides and performs heat exchange; the heat sinks (21, 22) for radiating heat due to the heat generation of the system; an external fan (30) which inspires an outside air from the supply vent, passes it through the TEC (10) and discharges it to the discharging vent; and an internal fan which passes the inside air through the heat sinks (21, 22) and the TEC (10).
As described above, the conventional TEC has adopted the method of attaching the heat sinks to both plates of the TEC The heat sink is made by extruding. If its size is large, then it is made as a bonded type. If the height of a fin is over 100 mm, then the radiation area per unit volume becomes limited since a pitch should be over 10 mm and a thickness should be over 2 mm. Moreover, the thermal resistance from the base of the heat sink to the edge of a fin should be significantly considered.
That is, the TEC uses the extruding heat sink or the bonded type heat sink. If so, however, the height, thickness and pitch of a fin become limited. Therefore, the radiation area is limited and the radiation ability per unit volume becomes low.